19
19
Juniper
The Macabe brother rule book: Edited Edition
4.
Don’t let a Macabe brother go down on you, even when he begs so beautifully.
I set the bowl of cat food down with a flourish, fingers wiggling like a 1950s show girl.
“This is the one. I can feel it.” Shakespeare took her sweet time, clambering down from the windowsill, stretching her long limbs through the beams of morning sunlight before regarding the offering.
Jasmine, the bubbly owner of the village pet store, had assured me that no sane cat would ever turn it down.
Shakespeare edged closer.
Sniffed and then tentatively licked, her pink tongue lapping.
My breath caught when she paused, head cocked with all the consideration of a critic at a Michelin-starred restaurant …
then greedily dug in.
Yes! My fist pump was as exuberant as it was silent.
Heart in my throat, I watched her for a long moment, hardly daring to believe she was actually eating.
Then fled to the bathroom before my presence somehow soured the experience for her.
I grabbed my phone from my bedside table as I brushed my teeth, prepared to read over the daily stream of reminders from Fiona.
And almost choked on the toothpaste when I found a text from Callum instead.
Macabe: What colour this morning, sweetheart?
I scoffed, waiting for the simmer of indignation.
Only it didn’t come.
It always came, that’s how we worked.
I frowned at my reflection above the sink, looking for the slightest change in my appearance.
My fringe had blown out perfectly this morning and my skin was on the glowy side.
I looked almost … happy.
But that wasn’t because of Callum.
There was no way. I’d had good orgasms before.
Great ones even.
None that made you want to spend the night afterwards.
None that tempted you to open your camera and show him precisely what colour underwear you’d picked out this morning.
Not since Alistair.
Shit.
What magic sauce did these Macabe men possess and why did I crave the taste?
Hell , maybe I should stay away from Mal, what if I got these …
feelings for him next?
No. My gut told me that was impossible.
Though my emotions felt as tangled as a string of Christmas tree lights, there was only one Macabe brother my body wanted, and it wasn’t the one who’d purchased the ring sitting on my sideboard.
Spitting out my toothpaste, I crossed the room in two strides, snatching up the box.
The diamond glinted in the sun, sending fractured beams of light in every direction.
While objectively beautiful, the square-cut diamond was ugly to me now.
Little more than a fucked-up talisman of a hopeless woman too scared to move on with her life.
A woman afraid to be hurt again.
Not wanting to look at it a second longer, I shoved the box into the closest drawer like it was the ghost of boyfriends past. Tears dampened my cheeks, and I brushed them away on my sleeve.
If there was a word to sum up an emotion both wonderful and a fucking disaster, it would be appropriate here, because for the first time I wanted to make the healthy decision and get rid of the thing.
For the first time, I wanted to make room in my heart for something good.
Even if that good was carried on timid wings, not quite certain they were strong enough to make the flight.
I wanted Callum.
I’d need to make things right with Heather before I continued any further down this path – I needed to explain myself properly.
Pacing outside his cottage last night, I’d known the second I knocked on his door that I would further cross the line she’d drawn.
I’d also known after the showdown with his dad that Callum needed someone.
It was selfish, but I’d wanted that someone to be me.
Then things spiralled and I hadn’t been thinking at all.
I looked at myself in the mirror, wondering if Heather would see the truth plastered all over my face.
Was it better to go to her straight away and confess everything?
Even if it meant she hated me, at least I’d be being honest.
Decision made, I grabbed my keys off the sideboard, deciding I’d pick up coffee and cupcakes from Brown’s on the way.
You couldn’t hate a person who brought cupcakes.
* * *
If this morning’s little revelation had felt like dangling from a clifftop, Callum on his knees outside the vet practice, a dog’s squished little face clutched between his capable hands, might have been enough to plummet me quite willingly to the rocks below.
That was … until I saw who he grinned up at.
My stomach sank.
Jill Mortimer.
Satan fucking spare me.
She was nine years my senior, but I swear the woman aged backwards.
She had skin like smooth glass and a laugh as lovely and effortless as a beauty queen’s right before announcing her singular dream was world peace.
But worse than all that superficial crap …
she never failed to make me feel small.
Callum’s mouth moved, his impossibly handsome face partially hidden behind her curves while she giggled with satisfaction, flicking her very long, very glossy hair over her shoulder.
I wanted to gouge my eyes out.
Had the roughness of his laugh always bordered on obscene?
And had his lips – lips that sucked my clit last night – always been so captivating?
Jeez, is he going down on her next?
He should. They looked perfect together.
I wrapped my arms around my middle, suddenly feeling silly.
Keeping my head down, I hurried past them, only slowing when I reached the line of customers curling out of Brown’s Café and onto the street.
The day was crisp and bright, even the chill in the air didn’t dissuade customers from occupying the wrought-iron outdoor tables.
A group of young backpackers huddled shoulder to shoulder beneath the awning, laughing as they passed around pastries.
“Ouch.” The word caressed the hair at my temple, startling me.
I didn’t turn as Callum slipped casually into the queue.
“A bit early in the morning for a brush-off, isn’t it?”
Thanks to the extra height from the raised pavement, we stood at exactly eye level, close enough for me to glimpse the light catching the strays of silver hair at his temples.
He wore no coat, only deep olive-green scrubs that brought out a tan no Scot had a right to possess.
Sniffing, I straightened my shoulders and indicated the people behind me.
“There’s a line.”
“We’ll order together.”
Ignoring him, I moved with the line, claiming another inch toward the door.
“Are we back to this, harpy?”
“We aren’t back to anything .”
His expression said I was full of shit.
“Then you won’t mind buying. I think I’ll get one of those expensive cupcakes with the sprinkles on top.”
“You hate buttercream icing, it’s too sweet.” Heat crept up my neck as he grinned, the corners of his eyes crinkling.
Call me Mrs Cellophane, because I’m bloody transparent .
“Does this count as one of our ‘dates’?” I crooked my fingers around the word.
Callum kept pace, moving onto the pavement and letting his shoulder brush mine.
“Are we getting a table?”
I didn’t have time to grab a table, but that wasn’t the reason I scoffed, “Absolutely not.”
“Then no.”
Why did he get to be the only one to determine the rules of our agreement?
“This counts. Take a picture and send it to your mum, tell her we’re having a great ‘friend date’, job done.”
He clucked his tongue.
“I think we both know this isn’t about my mum anymore.”
Panic replaced the indignation.
Why did he always have to be so honest?
“We’re sticking to the terms of our agreement,” I said more coolly than I’d intended.
“Fine.” He shrugged, unbothered.
“I’ll buy my own coffee.”
“Then get to the back of the line.” I knew I was acting like a jealous arsehole.
I hated being that girl that blew hot and cold when nothing had really changed since last night – except Jill’s fucking giggle playing on a loop in my head.
Out of all the women in Kinleith, why did it need to be her?
His head fell back, a half groan half laugh on his lips.
“Jesus, sweetheart, are you ever going to stop giving me shit?”
“You’ve been giving me shit from the moment we met. The other women in your life might enjoy your brand of banter, Macabe, but I don’t.”
God, stop talking!
“Did you just refer to yourself as a woman in my life?”
“That’s what you took from all of that?” I whacked my hand off his bicep.
He caught my wrist, running his thumb over the slip of bone there.
“My mind is shockingly single track, I’m afraid.”
I rolled my eyes at the honey all but dripping from his tongue.
“Don’t repeat that to the people of Kinleith who trust you to take care of their pets, you might have a mutiny on your hands. Dennis Foster also happens to be a very skilled veterinarian.”
He tugged me closer until I could feel the heat of him through my clothes.
Like a true Highlander, even dressed in only thin scrubs, he ran as hot as a furnace.
“We discussed your visits to Portree already.”
“He comes highly recommended.”
If it was possible, he drew me even closer.
Until I had no choice but to look up at him or smoosh my face into his chest. “Obviously I didn’t make myself clear enough last night, Juniper. I’m happy to submit to you, any time, any place of your choosing.” His fingers danced up my wrist to stroke over my knuckles.
“Snap these fingers and I’m yours.” His voice turned low.
As thick as chimney smoke.
I had to take a breath.
“But if I find out you’ve visited that charlatan again, we’ll be experimenting with a little role reversal.”
My body lit like a furnace.
Something hot coiling low and demanding in my stomach.
It couldn’t be lust. Bossy did not turn me on.
It never had. “I have no interest in doing whatever this is.”
He laughed.
“Your thighs practically decapitated me last night, harpy. You wanted it just as bad as I did.”
“Yeah, no shit. It was cunnilingus, Callum, even when it’s bad it’s pretty good.”
“It was fucking great ,” he ground out.
A single look at my face had him groaning.
“Fuck, but that face gets me hot. From the moment I laid eyes on you.”
Someone behind us coughed and I suddenly became painfully aware of the gazes we were drawing.
The group of backpackers watched from over their coffee cups like we were the best show they’d seen all year.
“We shouldn’t be seen together.”
“Worried Jess might guess that I had my tongue inside you last night?” My knees almost buckled.
The woman behind us spluttered and covered her child’s ears.
I barely noticed as Callum’s eyes fell to my mouth.
He hadn’t tried to kiss me last night but looked eager to remedy the mistake now.
“Well, now I am.” I laughed, picturing Jess’s horror if she ever made that discovery.
He laughed too, his throat working around the sound.
“Jess does seem to have her mind in the gutter …” Callum kept talking but his words faded as a form I’d have recognised anywhere cut along the street, head and shoulders above everyone else.
Just like his brothers.
“Alistair?” The name felt both familiar and foreign on my tongue.
His head snapped up, purposeful strides wavering as he found me all too easily on the busy street, like he’d done so a thousand times before.
An old dance our muscles had memorised long ago, then forgotten to alert our brains when the rhythm changed.
I didn’t know why I’d spoken his name, drawn attention to myself.
The shock, most likely, because when his feet changed direction, heading right for me, his expression shifting from pensive to elated in a heartbeat, I was certain this was nothing more than a bizarre out-of-body experience.
I’d almost forgotten Callum entirely, until his elbow brushed mine and then all I could think about was the scrap of space between us.
“June?” Alistair spoke my name the way you’d address an old friend you hoped to see again but hadn’t expected the reunion to happen quite so soon.
From behind round glasses, he ate up the sight of me, calculating the changes from the tips of my thick-soled shoes to my hair that was six inches shorter than it had been the last time we’d spoken.
When he’d told me through a video call, guilt-ridden and teary-eyed, that I didn’t need to return the engagement ring.
As though the four-carat diamond were a suitable consolation prize for losing the man you loved.
His hair was shorter too.
Shorter than I’d ever seen it.
His shoulders were broader, ready to burst the seams of his thick navy jumper.
He looked good.
I hated that I noticed and compared, because Callum looked better .
Alistair paused an arm’s length away, a tentative smile softening the set of his harsh lips.
“Hey.”
Hey.
Six years of nothing broken with three letters.
They weren’t even the good ones.
I’d planned for this moment, replaying the imagined back and forth over and over.
The ways I’d make him beg.
Make him crawl. Now he stood before me and I couldn’t utter a single word.
His smile dipped uncertainly, turning into a frown as he glanced to Callum.
“Cal, good to see you.” If Alistair found our proximity strange, I saw no hint of it as he pulled Callum into a back-slapping hug.
Callum’s posture remained a little stiff, but when he drew back, he was smiling, cupping Alistair’s cheeks as though he were seven years old.
“Why didn’t you say you were coming?”
Alistair shifted, eyes cast down, and I remembered why he’d always refused to play cards.
He couldn’t lie for shit.
“I managed to wrangle some time off last minute, figured I’d surprise you.”
“You look tired,” Callum observed, taking in Alistair’s longer than usual facial hair and dark smudges beneath his eyes.
And it was with a wash of relief I realised the urge to comfort, to wrap my arms around his middle and kiss the sharp point of his chin no longer existed.
“I’m fine,” he lied again.
Speaking to Callum but looking at me.
My heart raced.
“Heather’s going to die when she sees you, the twins too – wait, where are you staying?”
“I haven’t decided. With Mum and Dad most likely …”
Their words faded in a hum as a different feeling settled, tight and uncomfortable like a vine curling around my chest. Alistair’s eyes kept finding mine, searching for something I didn’t know how to give.
And Callum … Callum didn’t look at me once.
My scalp prickled, entire body going hot.
My breaths turned choppy.
Doubling, until the space of one became two.
You’re hyperventilating , the tiny, aware part of my brain warned.
Unable to make the connection to my lungs.
I have to get out of here .
Black smudged the edges of my vision.
I turned and stumbled – feet heavy as I tripped along the street without a word.
“Juniper!” Callum shouted.
I kept going. Clawing at the zip on my jacket.
I rounded the corner.
Tarmac giving way to gravel.
The sandstone village hall stood proud like a proverbial white flag.
Five steps. My car was five steps away.
I dug through my bag, searching for my keys.
Four steps.
Callum skidded to a stop in front of me.
Both hands raised as though herding a wounded animal.
“Juniper, just wait – are you?” He paled, a muscle in his jaw jumping.
“Are you crying?”
Was I?
I swiped at my cheeks, stunned to find my hands came away wet.
“I’m not bloody crying,” I spat, though we could both clearly see the remnants of tears.
I hated every stupid one of them.
I hated the pain in his expression when his eyes bounced between mine, then to my car as though he didn’t have the faintest idea what to say.
Fine by me . I tried to slide past him, but he caught me, then held his hands up placatingly when I flinched away from the touch.
“You can’t drive off like that.”
“I’m fine, get out of my way.” I desperately searched the other pocket then tore through my bag again.
“Where the bloody hell are my keys?”
“They’re in your hand . Shit , sweetheart.” His entire face caved in on itself, devastated for me.
“It’s okay to be upset about this.”
“Don’t call me that.” I sidestepped him.
“And I’m not upset, I’m pissed .” But that didn’t feel right either – it was like an old scar had torn open down my chest, only to discover it had never healed properly in the first place.
“That’s fine too.”
I choked on a laugh, it sounded pathetic.
“Are you a therapist now?”
“ No . If I were, I wouldn’t be fighting the urge to go back there and punch my brother for putting that look on your face.”
I dropped my face in my hands.
A little of the tightness in my chest easing.
“I don’t want that. I never wanted—” Never wanted to come between them.
His hands curled around my shoulders.
“I know.”
This was so bloody wrong – all of it – still I gave myself a second to sink into his grip.
“This is why last night should never have happened.” Backing up, I swiped at my face again.
“Between Alistair and Heather, it’s too complicated.”
“It doesn’t have to be.” He made it sound so easy.
“Alistair—”
“Alistair is a fucking idiot.” He was before me in a heartbeat, his own breathing erratic as he hissed, “It’s what I think now and it’s what I told him then. He could have had—” He shook his head, pupils blown as he looked at me with a fierceness that raked like claws across my heart.
“He never deserved you.”
He never deserved you.
How many people uttered those very words?
And just like every time before, they rang hollow in my heart.
“If you want to talk to him—”
“I don’t want to talk to him. I don’t think I should talk to you either.”
He swallowed.
“Will you let me drive you home? Please?”
I shook my head.
“I can manage.”
“If that’s what you want,” he said but it looked as though the words cost him something.
“You don’t need to worry about me.” I brushed past him this time, without meeting his stare.
If I did, I would have given in to anything he offered.
To drive me home. To hold me in his arms. I already balanced on a knife’s edge.
I reached for the handle.
He got there first. “That’s an impossible habit to break. Don’t ask me to.” Slipping the keys from my grip, he held the driver’s door wide, waiting for me to climb inside.
Once I was behind the wheel, he dropped to his knees, reaching up and around to click the seatbelt into place.
Giving a tug to ensure it was secure.
My hands trembled a little in my lap.
Callum lifted them and set them on the wheel at ten and two.
“Breathe, sweetheart. Take one big breath in.” I did, feeling the bite of the seatbelt before I released it.
“Again.” I complied.
“Again.” He repeated the word ten more times.
Until my tears dried and my grip turned steady.
“Will you let me know when you get home?”
I nodded, twisting the keys to start the engine.
He finally pushed to stand.
Closing the door with a click, he stepped out of view, waiting, as I backed the car from the spot and drove to the exit.
Hitting my indicator left, I glanced in my rearview to find him watching.
Hands on his hips, breeze tossing his curls.
He waited until my car disappeared from view.